


Slow Down (You're Breaking Up)

by BonitaBreezy



Category: Check Please! (Webcomic)
Genre: Addiction, Alcohol Abuse/Alcoholism, Complete, F/M, Oneshot, Slurs, Yeah okay not really that last one so much, Zimbits is very background, a fresh dose of reality, overdose mention, shitty's life starts to suck real hard real fast, the magic of friendship, theres one and it's right in the first paragraph
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2016-12-26
Updated: 2016-12-26
Packaged: 2018-09-12 10:31:44
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 3,400
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/9067813
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/BonitaBreezy/pseuds/BonitaBreezy
Summary: Shitty's halfway through his first year of law school when his dad cuts him off for good.





	

**Author's Note:**

> This was originally posted on Tumblr and I just decided to put it over here too so it was easier to keep track of. So if you've seen it before that's why.

Shitty’s halfway through his first year of law school when his dad cuts him off for good. It’s the result of a screaming argument between Shitty and his grandmother at Christmas dinner that starts with “that gold digging chink whore” and ends with “you evil vapid bitch” and Shitty slamming his way out the front door.

He spends an hour driving around in a cloud of anger before he realizes that he’s made his way to Dorchester and is only a few blocks away from Lardo’s building. He’s spent countless summer hours smoking weed on the fire escape outside Lardo’s bedroom window, so it’s not very hard to find it even in the dark. Climbing up three stories on icy metal stairs is much harder. He slips once, and he’s sure he’ll have a pretty gnarly bruise on his hip for a few days, but he manages all right. Even though it’s nearly nine o’clock at night, she opens the window when he knocks and lets him climb through. She doesn’t ask him any questions, and for once in his life he doesn’t want to talk. He just wants to kiss her, so that’s what he does, until they’re punch drunk and sleepy. They sleep crammed together on her twin bed, Shitty curled into a tight ball with Lardo pressed up against his back.

The next morning she wakes him up with coffee and a take-out container with a huge strawberry-topped waffle inside. They split it while he tells her what happened, and she mostly just listens, other than snorting and saying, “I’m not even Chinese” when he tells her about what started the argument in the first place.

She lets him talk and rage and rave until he’s hoarse, and then she kicks his ass at Mario Kart until he’s calm again. She manages his feelings just as surely and easily as she does the Samwell Men’s Hockey team, and by the time he kisses her goodbye and makes his way back down the fire escape, he feels better.

The feeling doesn’t last, though.

  
When he gets back to his apartment in Cambridge, his father is there with fire in his eyes. He takes Shitty’s car keys and his credit cards and his cell phone and tells him he’ll have until the end of the month to find a new place. There’s a long lecture about respect and responsibility that Shitty mostly tunes out, far too angry to bother listening. He chases his father out with a righteous “I don’t need you or your money, fuck you!" He drinks a six pack of beer and feels vindicated and free for the first time in his life, and it's exhilarating.

A week later, it’s less exhilarating.

He gets a loan from Jack for the down payment on a crappy apartment in Newton Center, promising that he’ll pay him back as soon as he gets a job. Jack shrugs him off, says he’s happy to help, but for Shitty it's a point of pride. He wants to prove that he doesn’t need handouts. As it turns out, getting a job when you have no skills to speak of and no one to connect you to the right people is really hard. Apparently, no one is impressed by his bachelor of arts degree in gender studies and poli sci. He snags a job as a cashier at the Stop and Shop, but even working full time for ten dollars an hour he just barely manages to pay for his ridiculously high rent and his bus pass to get back and forth from school.

For the first time in his life, he can’t just go to the grocery store and get whatever he wants. He has to carefully budget everything, and more often than not he ends up charging it to his newly minted credit card, with its $800 credit line and 25% interest fee. As it turns out, having no credit is expensive. He basically lives on ramen and beer, and occasionally he’ll send a plea to Bitty for a pie via email, because even a pay as you go phone is beyond his means. He spends a lot of his time on campus, where the wifi is free.

Bitty, the beautiful motherfucker that he is, always comes through, and one time he sends a strawberry cream pie and a chicken pot pie, loaded with moist chicken and fresh vegetables in a gravy so fragrant it makes his mouth water. Shitty definitely cries when he takes the first bite, and he does his best to make it last as long as possible, only giving in and having one last, large slice when the crust starts to go stale.

He starts thinking that maybe he can manage it all, even if he’s absolutely miserable, at least until he gets an email about the internship he agreed to right before Christmas break. It was with a private law firm his dad had connected him with, and though he’s not soulless enough to work for a corporate law firm, he knows a good learning opportunity when he sees one. The problem is, the internship is unpaid. That would have been fine a few months ago, but now that he’s working forty hours a week and commuting an hour both ways to and from school and also dealing with a metric shitton of school work and he actually has to study for the first time in his life, it seems like too much.

But that’s how law school works. He needs to get out there, network, get his name known and learn as much as he can. So he rearranges his schedule to an almost impossible configuration, with morning classes, a few hours at his internship in the middle of the day, then night classes. Then, he gets on the bus and goes to work the graveyard shift at Stop and Shop. The night manager is dead inside and doesn’t care if he does his class readings when it’s dead, and it is very often dead in the middle of the night. He gets off his shift at four in the morning and goes home to sleep for four hours before he has to get up to catch the bus back to Cambridge for morning classes. Sunday is his one day off, devoid of any jobs or school, and he spends half of it sleeping and the other half catching up on school work.

He hasn’t been to Samwell in months. He hardly ever gets time to Skype Lardo, and when he does it’s with the video function off because the network at Harvard lags too much with it on. He misses her face, and he misses undergrad, and he misses sleeping. He’s so exhausted all the time and he can’t remember the last time he woke up feeling rested. He can’t remember the last time he had ate something that wasn’t ramen, or drank something that wasn’t cheap, shitty-ass beer. He can’t remember the last time he was really happy, but he thinks it might have been sitting with Lardo on her bed in her parents’ apartment, getting absolutely trounced in Mario Kart.

By the time finals come around, he absolutely hates his life, and it’s even worse when he has to tell Lardo that he won’t make it down for graduation. He can’t afford to take the day off, and even if he could, he can’t afford a train ticket to Samwell. He can’t ask Holster to come get him for his own graduation ceremony, and he can’t ask Jack to drive thirty miles past Samwell to Boston and then back again. So he makes his excuses and apologies and Lardo tells him that she understand and that it’s cool, in that calm, chill way she has when she’s upset and trying not to show it.

So graduation passes and he gets to look at the pictures Bitty uploads to Twitter of all his friends together, happy and laughing. Lardo looks gorgeous, like she always does, and it looks like Ransom and Holster are going out in true SMH style with the kegster to end all kegsters. A video gets uploaded of a very sloshed Bitty and Holster dancing on a table to Beyonce, and Jack is in the background looking like it’s both the best and worst day of his life. Shitty wants to be there so badly, to chirp Jack into oblivion, to dance with Bitty and Holster, to kiss his girlfriend and challenge her Beer Pong title one more time.

Instead, he goes to work, and then home, where he drinks himself into oblivion and passes out, so very grateful that the next day is Sunday and he can sleep it all away.

Life goes on the same, though now Lardo is back in Boston. She’s living with her parents and working in a ritzy art gallery. It’s not exactly what she wanted to do with her art degree, but since she’s living at home she can put her money towards art supplies, and it’s a start. They spend every free moment together, but since Shitty’s free moments are few and far between he still misses her like crazy. The days he comes home from work to find her asleep in his bed are the best days.

She’s hardly been home two weeks when she starts mentioning the drinking. He doesn’t see why it’s that big of a deal. He’s been a drinker as long as she’s known him, and usually she keeps up with him shot for shot. Sure, he didn’t used to spike his coffee on the way to school, but a little liquid strength never hurt anybody. At first, it’s chirpy. Her telling him to save some for her, or asking if he’s trying to win a competition. Then, she starts offering to grab him some water when she goes into the kitchen and asking if he wants her to run to the store and pick up soda. Finally, though, she says what she really means.

“I’m worried about you,” she says, crossing her arms loosely in front of her and leaning her hip against the kitchen door jamb. He grabs a beer out of the fridge and cracks it open, draining half of it in one pull. It doesn’t really even taste like anything anymore, and he can’t decide if that’s a good thing or a bad thing.

“I’m fine,” Shitty assures her, finishing off the beer and reaching in to grab another. “I mean...it’s not easy, but I’m dealing.”

“I don’t think you are, though,” Lardo says. He opens his new can and takes another swig.

“You’re drinking a lot, Shits. Like...a lot.”

“I’m fine,” Shitty says again. “I like beer, it’s not a big deal.”

“I haven’t seen you without some sort of alcohol in your hand since I got home for the summer,” she says.

“I’m really stressed,” Shitty tries to explain, but he can see she’s not convinced. “It helps take the edge off a bit. But I swear, I’m okay.”

She frowns at him, still pretty even when she looks so disappointed, and he can’t handle her looking at him like that, so he just rolls his eyes and heads to his bed. He only has a few hours to sleep before he needs to get up for his internship, and if he sleeps at least he won’t be thinking about money and how he’s going to afford school next year.

When he wakes up the next day, he discovers his alarm has been turned off and Jack is there.

“What the fuck?” he demands, because he’s three hours late.

“I called in for you,” Jack says. “We need to talk.”

“About what?” Shitty demands. “It couldn’t have waited? I don’t come to your place and call in to tell the Falconers you’re not gonna bother showing up.”

He reaches over to his bedside table and grabs the can of beer he set there the night before, taking a swig. It’s warm and kind of gross, but he drinks it anyway because it’s there.

“Lardo is worried about you,” Jack says calmly. “We all are. She says you’re drinking too much.”

“She’s over-reacting,” Shitty says, only not taking another drink because Jack looks pointedly at the drink in his hand.

“Lardo doesn’t over-react,” Jack insists. “We just want to help, Shitty.”

“And why the fuck did she call you, then?” Shitty demands defensively. “You’re not my captain and you’re not my dad.”

“I’m your friend,” Jack says. “And she thought I might be a sympathetic ear. I understand addiction…”

“Oh, fuck you,” Shitty snaps, finishing off his beer and slamming the can down on the bedside table. He rolls out of bed and stalks off towards the kitchen. There’s a foil wrapped casserole dish on the counter, and when he peels it back he finds enchilada chicken nestled in a bed of yellow rice and beans, and his mouth waters. He knows Bitty must have sent it, and while part of him knows that he did it because that’s how he worries and takes care of people, most of him is too hungry to care. He grabs a fork and starts eating right out of the dish. He stuffs his face until it’s hard to swallow and then turns to the refrigerator.

“Getting another beer?” Jack asks. “Your second of the day, and it’s only ten.”

Shitty ignores him and grabs a can, disappointed to see that there’s only two left.

“Go back to Providence, Jack,” Shitty says irritably. He can’t believe he’s spent so much time missing him, and the first time Jack comes to see him he only comes to scold him for his life choices, like Shitty is some idiot child who can’t handle his own life.

“I’m not going anywhere until we talk about this,” Jack insists. “You need help, Shits.”

“Fuck you,” Shitty retorts. “Just because you couldn’t hack it and fucked up your life doesn’t mean the rest of us will. I’m not a fucking addict just because I like to have a drink now and then.”

“It’s not now and then, Shits. Lardo says she hasn’t seen you sober the entire time she’s been back.”

“Just because you’re an uptight asshole who can’t have more than one drink without slipping back into drug abuse doesn’t mean I have a problem.”

“Well, if it’s not an alcohol problem, then what is it? Because you’re certainly not acting like the Shitty I know,” Jack says quietly. “Because the guy who pulled me out of my shell freshman year and helped me be a person that I can like and respect would never shove my overdose in my face like you just did.”

That makes Shitty pause, because he knows Jack’s right. That’s some really fucked up shit he just said, and he said because he knew it was exactly what would hurt Jack the most. Shitty’s always been brash, but he’s never considered himself a cruel person. Going straight for Jack’s fleshy bits as a defense mechanism is a cruel thing to do.

“Shitty, you have to see that there’s a problem,” says Lardo, who has apparently been there the whole time. “You’re struggling and you drink to take the anxiety away, I get that. But that’s not helping. I can help you. Jack can help you. You just have to let us. Because right now you’re just pushing us away, and when you’re all alone, what will you do then?”

He thinks about the two beers left in the fridge and he really wants one, because he realizes he’s already finished the one he grabbed a few minutes ago. He bought that 18 can case two nights ago, and he can’t remember the last time he left the house without a thermos filled with an even ratio of shitty ten dollar Coulson’s and coffee.

He hasn’t really noticed how much he was drinking, because it hadn’t seemed important. It soothes his nerves, helps him sleep when he’s feeling restless. He doesn’t know when casual drinking had turned into not being able to function in the morning without at least one beer. Maybe some time in between finding out that he was so privileged he couldn’t function in the real world without his dad’s money and realizing that he was going to have to drop out of law school and work at the Stop and Shop for the rest of his life.

“Shitty,” Lardo says, her voice quieter and sadder than he’s ever heard it, and suddenly he realizes that he’s crying.

“Fuck,” he says, his voice cracking. “Fuck.”

“Hey,” she says, moving forward to wrap her arms around his waist. He clings to her even though he knows he doesn’t deserve to. “You’ll be okay, Shitty.”

“I’m failing at everything,” Shitty says, because it’s all he can think about. “I was so fucking self-righteous, so sure I could stick it to my dad and show him I didn’t need him, but I do. I’m so fucking useless. I can’t do this on my own.”

“You don’t have to,” Jack says, and then he’s there wrapping his arms around both of them, and it’s the safest the Shitty has felt in a long time. He drops his head on top of Lardo’s, burying his face in her hair. They’re being so good to him, so kind when he was such an asshole.

“I can’t afford to go to school,” Shitty says. “I can’t even afford to pay for this shitty apartment.”

“We’ll look into student loans,” Lardo says soothingly. “After four years, FAFSA is my bitch.”

“I can help you pay for your apartment,” Jack offers quietly, because he’s just like Shitty used to be. Rich and privileged and able to throw around money like it meant nothing, because to him it did mean nothing.

“Nah, brah,” Shitty says, even though the idea of not having to worry about rent makes his stomach clench in want. “I love you, and I appreciate you caring even when I’m being a righteous fucking tool, but I can’t...after everything I’ve been through I can’t go back to living with someone taking care of me. I’ve got to figure out how to take care of myself, right? I’m twenty-three years old, I’ve gotta be responsible for myself, right?"

“We’ll find you a roommate,” Lardo says. “Or two, even.”

Shitty feels so stupid for having never even thought of a roommate. He’s apparently so fucking smart, but the idea of getting someone to split the rent with never even occurred to him.

“Will you be my roommate?” he blurts. It should be a romantic declaration, asking his girlfriend to move in with him. It shouldn’t be in the middle of his janky kitchen while he’s half drunk and sobbing all over her head.

Still, she says, “I’d love that. I love you.”

“I love you, too,” he sniffles. “Both of you. I’m sorry I fucked up so badly.”

“It’s okay,” Jack says. “We’re allowed to fuck up, and we’re allowed to fix it when we do.”

That sets him off again, and he cries so hard that he can’t talk past the lump in his throat. He cries so long that eventually his knees just give out on him, and they all slide down to his grody kitchen floor in a huddled heap. He cries until the tight knot that’s lived in his chest for months comes loose and he can finally breath again, and the whole time they just hold him and let him sob.

He cries until he can’t anymore, until he’s too exhausted and dry to produce anymore tears, and that’s when Jack lifts him up and brings him back to bed. A year ago he would have simpered and swooned. Now, he just lays there limply and wonders how much weight and muscle mass he must have lost in the past few months for Jack to be able to carry him around so easily.

He knows that later they’ll have to talk about serious, important things. AA and financial aid and support systems and what the fuck he’s going to do with himself. But for now, he just curls up in his bed cocooned between the heat of Jack and Lardo’s bodies, and they sleep.


End file.
